Subject: 3.5m Night Log 20090511 Date: Tue, 12 May 2009 11:04:20 +0000 (UTC) From: bketzeba@apo.nmsu.edu Apache Point Observatory 3.5m Telescope Night Log Monday, May 11, 2009 ACTUAL ASTRONOMER OBSERVER(S) INSTRUMENT START FINISH ------------------------------------------------------------------- M.Klaene B.Ketzeback Fastcam, 20:00 05:07 Triplespec, Shack-Hartmann NA2Gdr INST SCHED(TWILIGHT) WEATH EQUIP OBS DAY NOT USED I/ROW/DN START FINISH D B D B D B USE D B ---------------------------------------------------------------------- EN01/W 20:52 05:07 0 0 0 0 1.7 6.5 0 0 0 note: scheduled times listed include instrument change time ------------- ACTIVITY LOG -------------- Observing Specialist: B.Ketzeback Az Vel Scale Was 575 measured 575.8 n/c Alt Vel Scale Was -602 measured -603.4 n/c Partly cloudy to mostly clear skies all evening. Seeing was good to moderate until 3:30 and then became poor and very variable. I was able to accomplish the following engineering tasks tonight: Fastcam, Collimation check and pointing model. Collimation did require a small to moderate change and I was able to verify that there was an improvement after the correction. The pointing model had a very similar RMS value to those seen the past 6 months however it is still large-ish in the altitude direction. Russet logged in and ran some tracking tests with Triplespec. She was able to verify that the problem is not related to the rotator or dependant on rotator position angle. Towards the end of the night seeing became too poor to work on any of the remaining tasks on the engineering list. If the weather cooperates tomorrow night we should be able to complete the list. At UTC 07:08:49, the rotator controller froze and was unresponsive. I was able to recover by resetting the controller. I did not switch back to the previous nights version of code. No other problems. ------- FAILURE LOG ------- PROG INST FAILURE MODE TIME (SEDFNVOG) TI/SHU START FINISH DESCRIPTION ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------- FOCUS LOG --------------- Time Instrument Focus Az El Temp Strc Prim Sec Air filt FWHM -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 20:35 FASTCAM 125( 1236) -26 65 15.6 16.5 16.4 15.6 15.6 --- 1.20 22:37 TSPEC 135( 788) -140 75 15.9 15.4 15.7 14.7 15.3 Ks 0.89 01:45 GUIDER 313( 859) -65 63 14.2 14.2 14.5 13.6 14.0 R+nd2 0.90 01:48 GUIDER 306( 852) -66 63 14.2 14.1 14.4 13.6 14.0 R+nd2 0.89 ------------- WEATHER LOG ---------------- Wind Precip.or Time Temp F Dewp F MPH Direction Dust Sky Conditions ------------------------------------------------------------------- 16:00 68 32 17 222 (SW) 1663 clear none 17:00 70 36 15 202 (SSW) 1750 mstly clr none 18:00 65 35 13 213 (SSW) 1909 mstly clr none 19:00 65 33 15 224 (SW) 2075 mstly clr none 20:00 60 37 14 186 (S) 2149 mstly clr none 21:00 60 28 11 191 (S) 2219 mstly clr none 22:00 61 26 13 211 (SSW) 1882 ptly cldy none 23:00 61 24 16 212 (SSW) 1644 ptly cldy none 00:00 59 31 17 202 (SSW) 2148 ptly cldy none 01:00 58 34 18 185 (S) 2111 ptly cldy none 02:00 57 36 27 197 (SSW) 2282 ptly cldy none 03:00 55 36 13 184 (S) 2231 ptly cldy none 04:00 54 35 17 178 (S) 2236 ptly cldy none 05:00 54 22 18 212 (SSW) 1790 clear none Note: the wind was coming from the azimuth listed. The convention used is north=0 degrees, east=90 degrees. The dust count is particles > 1u per 0.1 cubic feet. TELESCOPE STATUS Telescope drives operational. Current TCC version: 2.10.0